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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23509135">typhoid and swans.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Prox'>Prox (Amber)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Acephobia, Angst, Apocalypse, Bad Boundaries, Canon Asexual Character, Death Threats, Denial, Emotional Manipulation, Jon/Elias-critical, Jon/Martin-critical, M/M, MAG161 Coda, Monster!Jon, Spoilers, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, body hopping, i was sad and angry so i wrote something sad and angry, unpleasant asexual sexual experiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:28:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,860</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23509135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/pseuds/Prox</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Pity, fear, catharsis. Three men at the end of the world. (Contains spoilers for MAG161.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elias Bouchard/Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>128</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>typhoid and swans.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Standard disclaimer: Please don't link this to the creators.</p><p>Written right after MAG161 but before the rest of S5. Please mind the tags.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p><em>I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.</em><br/>
— Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs.</p>
</blockquote><hr/><p>"Shut up," Jon says. Jonah hasn't said anything, just pressed a biting kiss to his neck, and then another. Jon Knows he's thinking about Martin, though, about how Jon had said, I love you, I'll be safer alone, just try and sleep while I'm gone. They don't need tea, really, but it would make Martin happy, and Jon wishes he was the person who could make Martin happy, whose sole motivation is making Martin happy (the way the reverse seems to be true.)</p><p>Elias — no, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah now — Jonah pulls his hair and bites him again and Jon groans. Shoves the other man hard back against the wall, the kind of brutality he's never really had cause for in his life, and Jonah laughs when Jon follows the momentum, laughs into Jon's mouth.</p><p>"Shut up," Jon says, furious that he's happy, that he's smug. How dare he enjoy this awful world he's brought about, how dare he enjoy what he's made of Jon, unable to just remain safely in the cottage. Martin would sit in his lap and comb fingers through his lengthening hair and it was wonderful, wonderful, so how dare Jonah be bright with the knowledge that Jon would rather be here, pinning him into kiss after kiss, both of them grappling frantically at the other's body.</p><p>"Go on, Jon," Jonah says in that condescending prick of a voice. "Tell me."</p><p>There's no boilerplate, no <em>Statement Begins</em>, Jon just picks one of the thousands of threads in a tapestry of fear and follows it, first person present. </p><p>"I've been hiding in the basement for two weeks now," he says in a soft, feminine voice as Jonah groans and opens his trousers. He's wearing what was once a woman's body, brown-skinned with dyed-blond waves in her hair, and when he gets Jon's hand between his legs he's so wet that it's noisy.  "I keep hearing the sounds of Mother scratching outside the door, but I don't think she knows I'm in here specifically. Sometimes she puts music on upstairs, the old records she and my father used to waltz around the kitchen to, before everything. I wonder if there's still enough left of his body for her to dance with."</p><p>There's more, there's worse, but Jonah has him drop to his knees for the climax.</p>
<hr/><p>Wouldn't you like things to be better, Jon? Wouldn't you like it if they were normal? Wouldn't you prefer if you were normal? Let's just pretend things are normal.</p><p>Jon's spent thirty-one years of his life being terrible at that pretense, but yes, Martin, a cup of tea sounds lovely. Sorry, Martin, I didn't mean to upset you. I love you. Let's not talk about that any more. I love you. That's the only feeling that matters. Don't ask about the hunger. Don't ask about the savor. Don't ask about the dreams any more, how many there are, how I can walk them waking because I no longer sleep. I love you, I love you, I love you.</p><p>"Do you think Daisy and Basira are out there still? Do you think they're trying to contact us?" he asks, peeking out the window at the Eye-sky again.</p><p>Jon slides a hand over the swell of his ass and Martin turns, flushing. When they kiss it's an act of denial on both their parts. See how normal I can be, Jon says to him, in the way they tumble slow-motion into bed. Martin pins his wrists playfully and he likes it, he does, of course he does. </p><p>(There's a fraction of an instant where, as Martin comes, he isn't afraid, and Jon isn't feeding on that fear, and they're normal, it's all so normal.)</p><p>"Everyone kept saying you didn't do this sort of thing," Martin says in the aftermath, in between other warm words that don't make Jon's stomach sink down through the floor. He's smiling, flushed and clearly a little smug. "Um, mostly Melanie, because she said, that Georgie said..."</p><p>The sentence dies as Jon looks at him. "Jon?" he asks, and touches his face so sweetly.</p><p>"Yeah," Jon says. "S'pose everyone was wrong about me, then."</p><p>He finds, from somewhere, something close enough to a smile that Martin drops the subject.</p>
<hr/><p>"You're nothing but what I made you," Jonah says, strangled, feet kicking in the empty air. He's a skinhead this time, with swastika tattoos down his clammy-pale arms. Tacky. Pickings must be slim.</p><p>That makes Jon give a sad little chuckle, just a dry creak of a thing. "Having some regrets, are we?"</p><p>Despite how tired he sounds, his eyes are avid, fixed on Jonah as he gasps for breath where Jon holds him. He isn't fighting, which is cute. Jonah has always had a healthy understanding of where power lies, of inevitability. He isn't smirking any more, either.</p><p>"Your first mistake," says Jon, "Was granting this power to anyone other than yourself."</p><p>"Need I remind you— I have my own — powers," Jonah points out.</p><p>"Right." Jon isn't particularly impressed. "What was it, you're the beating heart of the Institute. If we kill you, we all die too." He'd been so stupid to believe that, </p><p>"Now, Jon," Jonah says. "Let's not do anything drastic."</p><p>"I could snap your neck," Jon says flatly.</p><p>"You could," Jonah agrees. "Isn't that the most wonderful feeling? A whole life in your hands. I might even actually die. Over two hundred years of experiences simply snuffed out. If you thought burning Keay's page was torment, just imagine how it will feel to—"</p><p>"Shut up," Jon says, and drops him, disgusted.</p>
<hr/><p>"We have to do something," Martin says, and this time Jon's laughter is hysterical.</p><p>"Don't you understand?" he says, "There's nothing we can do. Believe me, if I saw even a <em>hint</em> of hope in this, I would gladly let you know." He doesn't like saying this, doesn't like puncturing Martin's bubble because — because it makes Martin sad, when he has to face the truth of the situation, and if Martin's happy then Jon is happy, they're happy together, they have each other and they don't, they don't need the outside world, he doesn't have to think about the outside world. All those experiences are happening to something else, some Archive part of him, and the last lingering dregs that are just Jon trying valiantly to survive, they need Martin and Martin's stubborn tenacious clinging to normalcy.</p><p>"We'll keep calm, and we'll stay together," Jon says, trying to steady his voice. "And — we'll be all right." Terribly all right. But what's the other option, to go completely insane? Kill Martin to spare him and endure this alone? No. He didn't get to choose the end of the world but he can damn well choose how he endures it.</p><p>"But what if there's," says Martin, "What if there's something that combats them. Isn't there, isn't love, enough to — you got me out of the Lonely, Jon, you took me back from it, you must be able to —"</p><p>"I didn't do that with love, Martin," Jon says, takes his hands, and lifts them to kiss the backs of his knuckles like if he just drowns them both in romantic little moments like Martin wants, if he just smothers them in their perfect feelings of having found each other, sweetness and support, he can stop an argument.</p><p>"Then—"</p><p>"I'm just powerful now," Jon says quietly.</p><p>"I know, Jon," Martin says, sad and peeved and Jon Knows he's wondering how he ended up here, having to talk Jon into saving the world, all self-righteous weariness that hasn't actually accepted it's too late for change. It's too late. Short of Dekker's extinction entity rising up and making way for a new symbiotic species of life-and-its-fears, it's too late.  "You know, if you're really that powerful, shouldn't you be able to do something about all this?" Martin says, and the wave of shame that washes through Jon is painful.</p><p>"Yeah," he says. "Maybe. I'll keep looking."</p><p>He'll keep Looking, because Looking is all he is now, and he doesn't want to stop. He doesn't <em>want</em> the apocalypse to stop.</p>
<hr/><p>"I used to forget things," Jon muses aloud to Jonah who is back in the Elias body, now that it's healed enough. Jon has taken great pleasure in fucking that particular mouth. (He doesn't get off on it — it isn't about the sex, just the way Jonah looks dripping snot and tears from gagging around whatever Jon chooses to fill his throat with. Pitiful little man.)</p><p>"That is to say," he continues, when Jonah doesn't respond. "As a young man, I used to forget... mostly experiences I had. I don't remember my first time, for instance. I lost names a lot. It's strange to think about now, that I'd be so worked up by — by simple social experiences, that my brain would protect itself and keep them from me." His amusement is hollow. "Apparently it's stopped bothering."</p><p>"Now you remember everything," Jonah says, elbow digging hard into Jon's bare sternum as he shifts to look up at him. Always those same eyes. "Such a perfect archive of the apocalypse."</p><p>It's hard to say what makes Jon shiver more, the praise or the implicit dehumanization. His eyelids close a moment in pleasure — a rare occurrence now that he's stopped blinking, though he still sees it all regardless.</p><p>"We're equally responsible for all this, you know," Jonah tells him. "You could choose to embrace that power."</p><p>"What power," Jon says. "You didn't give me a choice." It startles him, how bitter he is about that. "You kept talking about choices," he goes on, thumbing below Jonah's eye socket like he's considering the limits of his powers. "But you never gave me one. You didn't <em>trust</em> me enough to—"</p><p>"You could have stopped reading," Jonah interrupts, silkily. "You've done it before, when there's interruptions in the middle of a statement."</p><p>"I tried," Jon says, refusing to let that worm another hole into him for the guilt to flood. "I— I truly tried, I wanted to, claw my own eyes out, to look away..."</p><p>"Just like you really wanted to run away with Martin," says Jonah, "When you approached him and told him that blindness was the answer, knowing he would refuse you." He lifts his hand and snatches Jon's wrist, pulls his archive's hand sharp away from its examination of his eye, the minute scars around the socket. Kisses the palm with a bruising, hateful gentleness.</p>
<hr/><p>"You're my world, Jon," Martin says sleepily, hand warm and heavy on Jon's shoulder, near his heart. </p><p>Jon stares up at the ceiling and watches every human life in torment. That's right, he thinks. I am the world. The screams no longer sound like anything to him now, just distant, constant music.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading! As always, all feedback will be printed out and consumed to sustain my human form.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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